About three years ago, I was sitting backstage at Chicago's Lyric Opera House, simultaneously watching and live-tweeting the results of one of the biggest nights of the year in food media: the James Beard Awards . For me, one of the most memorable wins of the weekend went to chef Chintan Pandya, who won “New York Best Chef” for his work at Dhamaka . Even now it still stands out, not just because he snagged the greatest selfie of the night, but because his speech thanked his right-hand man and business partner Roni Mazumdar for siding with his craziest dreams.

“I always came up with ideas which were very idiot and stupid. And over the 22 years that I’ve been cooking, nobody believed in it,” he said in his acceptance speech. “I met this guy [Mazumdar] five years back a

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